IN OCTOBER, THREE boxers from Mullingar’s Olympic Boxing Club stood on the podium at the World Boxing U19 Championships in Montenegro.

Only nine of the 69 countries at the tournament managed better, with Olympic BC’s tally of one gold and two bronzes matching Brazil’s haul from the tournament.

John Donoghue at 70kg was the only Irish champion at the tournament, and with his brother Jason Donoghue and clubmate Louise Joyce also bringing home bronzes, the trio accounted for half of Ireland’s medal tally.

The club’s head coach John Joe Joyce, a former Olympian and National Elite Champion, wasn’t surprised to see his star pupil bring home a world title.

“I was expecting John to be thereabouts for a gold,” Joyce says. “I felt like he was the man to beat. Like, John is a super talent.

“Ashirbay [his opponent in the final] had a good record, but he’d never come up against John before, so I was very confident.”

The final showed just how much ability the 18-year-old has. After two close rounds against Bibarys Ashirbay of Kazakhstan, the current Asian U19 champion, Donoghue dominated the third, pushing a pace his opponent could not match and landing power shots at will.

“John’s the type of boxer where he slowly adapts to you,” says Joyce of Donoghue’s performance in the final.

“He’s never worried when he loses the first round, because he knows he’s going to adapt. Then, when the third round comes, John sets a really high pace and that can break any boxer down.”

As for his bronze medallists, their success was a bit more unexpected given their ages.

“The thing is, Louise and Jason, they’re younger… Louise only turned 17 in October, so she’d be giving away a year and a half to some other boxers. And Jason, again, is a 2009 kid, so he would be giving away that year.”

That certainly doesn’t mean that Joyce lowered his expectations of either boxer, though.

“Both of them medalled, and they’re huge achievements, but both of them might have felt like they left it behind by not beating their semi-final opponents.”

It probably isn’t surprising then that there wasn’t much fanfare when the trio, and European U15 medallist Cian Leddy arrived home with their silverware last week.

“It’s always on to the next competition,” explains Joyce, which is something of a mantra for the gym.

Then he says something that makes him sound like boxing’s Roy Keane:

“Louise, Jason, John and Cian all came back, got a couple of photos and got their names on the wall and stuff, but we’re not really into praise and parties and stuff like that.”

Opened in 2014, Olympic BC has won 20 underage world and European medals, as well as four senior All-Irelands and one world elite medal, when a then-teenage Patsy Joyce brought home a bronze from last year’s World Boxing Championships in Liverpool.

They’ve also won over 100 underage All-Ireland titles, and Joyce says that they prepare every boxer to fight at the highest level. “The main thing is that we’re training them all for the elites so that they’re ready when they come to it at 19 or 20,” he says.

Although that mindset has probably given Olympic BC much of its success, it also has a big trade-off; many kids simply aren’t prepared for the level of commitment required.

“Each year I say ‘we can’t keep it going’, because we just don’t have the number of boxers to keep this level going. There’s some kids that drop out at 16, 17 years of age, as usual in sport, but the ones we have, we work on them and try to get the next boxer in the door to keep it going.”

So, if the mantra of Olympic BC is “onto the next competition”, then what is next for their fighters? Internationally, Niamh Keogh will hope to bring home another medal at the European U23 Championships kicking off later this week in Croatia.

And there’s something just as exciting brewing on the domestic stage, as John Donoghue will contest his first National Elite Championships in January, fighting in the already stacked 70kg class. The reigning champion, Jon McConnell, has won a Commonwealth gold and a European Elite bronze in 2026.

As always though, Joyce is backing his man.

“John is definitely doing the Elites in January… We’ve seen John sparring with elites, we know what he can do in the gym, and we’d be going into the Elites fairly confident.”